TheStar.com | News | `The leader does the right thing'

TheStar.com | News | `The leader does the right thing'




Jan 17, 2008 04:30 AM
Jim Coyle

You have to admire Gerry Connelly. The Toronto District School Board's director of education makes it clear where the buck stops. At her desk, thanks.

Connelly took responsibility this week for any failure to inform senior staff about making submissions to lawyer Julian Falconer's investigation of high-school safety.


Falconer had expressed astonishment that only four of 24 superintendents met with his panel. The superintendents, for their part, said they were never directly invited. Connelly said she "took accountability for any breakdown in communication" that occurred.

It's noble, of course, for her to take one for the team, fall on her sword and all that. But, frankly, it hardly seems fair.

It's not just that, in high schools across the city, corridors are filled with posters urging students to speak up about bullying, about racism, about homophobia – placing the onus on witnesses not to remain silent.

It's that Connelly, at various times over the last two years, had provided superintendents with as much as an engraved invitation to share their experience and wisdom, to take risks, to act as leaders rather than mere managers.

It's impossible to think that the killing in May 2007 of 15-year-old Jordan Manners at C.W. Jefferys High School or the establishment weeks later of the Falconer panel wasn't invitation enough for board superintendents to get involved.

But if so, it was surely reasonable to expect that the release of Falconer's interim report in August 2007 might have raised doubts about whether the sidelines was really the place for them to be.

While the interim report focused on life at the high school where Manners was killed, it alerted the board to other serious issues, Connelly said in a statement issued with its release. "We need to address these issues quickly."

She knew it wasn't easy. But, luckily, courage, forthrightness, participation were virtues the director held in high esteem.

In August 2006, at a two-day conference with board superintendents preparing for the school year in which Jordan Manners would die, Connelly had apparently given a remarkable speech on Leading, Managing and Motivating.

Not every such oration musters quotes from sources as disparate as M.I.T. and Henry V. But Connelly's did. And it's difficult to believe that any superintendent hearing it ever felt they needed a formal invitation to participate in matters critical to school safety in this city.

She wanted to talk about leadership first, Connelly said. "What does it take to be a leader?

"As a leader at the TDSB, we set the tone for the success of this board and all of those who work and learn within it."

There was a difference, she said, between leaders and mere managers. (She even provided some dictionary definitions to make her message clear.) "The manager administers; the leader innovates. The manager maintains; the leader develops. The manager focuses on systems and structures; the leader inspires trust.

"The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.

"We count on you, as senior staff, to excel at both," she said. "And to remember, beyond the skill set, that leadership is about values. It's about the inspiration, vision and human passion that drives success and relationships. More than ever, we need your collective wisdom to achieve our goals."

When it comes to communicating – clearly, at times almost poetically – what was expected of senior staff, it seems Gerry Connelly has nothing for which to apologize.